Speech by Minister Grace Fu at the Municipal Services Awards Ceremony

Sep 12, 2018

Good afternoon to all of you and thank you so much for joining us.

I am grateful for your strong support in recognising the contributions of the OneService community in making a better living environment for all. This year, we received 97 nominations for the awards, significantly higher than the 68 nominations last year. After going through all the nominations, 18 teams and individuals are conferred the Municipal Services Awards in recognition of your outstanding contributions. I would like to congratulate all the Award recipients!

We achieve more when we collaborate closely and serve with residents in mind

An awards event is a meaningful occasion for us to take time to reflect on our partnerships and celebrate the efforts of our teams – our colleagues and partners working on the frontline and those supporting us behind the scenes – both working collaboratively for the benefit of the public.

This is how we can serve the public effectively and efficiently, by going the extra mile in resolving complex issues. These issues often involve, multiple agencies, multiple parties and require shaping of behaviour over time and tackling of root causes, which can be complex social and health problems such as lack of family support or poor mental health. It is crucial that we take a resident-centric approach, go beyond our respective silos, and work together to tackle the issues.

Today’s award recipients understand this well. They exemplified a spirit of collaboration and resident centricity towards resolving issues. Let me highlight one example. Both NParks and LTA observed rising concerns amongst the public on accidents and near-misses caused by irresponsible users of Personal Mobility Devices, or PMDs, along park connectors. They recognised the need for active education and outreach to address this. Instead of each trying to tackle the issue alone, they came together to identify hotspots from public feedback, and intensify and target their public engagements at these locations. By collaborating closely, they tackled the problem where it mattered, and helped bring about greater safety for pedestrians, in park connectors and beyond.

The OneService team includes the Community—we can all contribute towards making our shared environment a better one

For our municipal services to be relevant to the community, it is crucial that our agencies and Town Councils have the support of local communities. The ‘Community Category’ was launched for this reason last year. This year, we have 9 award recipients under this category, up from 5 last year. This reflects the increasing involvement of, and recognition given to, local communities in improving our municipal services. 

Community partners are important for two reasons. First, the direct involvement of the community can bring about more effective, impactful and sustainable solutions to ground issues. Local communities – the residents - know best what the challenges are on the ground, and have valuable networks and relationships that can be tapped to tackle the municipal issues. 

One good example is the joint effort by AVA, Ai Tong School and Thomson Sin Ming Court RC in educating residents on pigeon feeding. AVA collaborated with the school in public education of residents by having the Primary 5 students design recycled bags that carried messages on pigeon feeding. Together with the RC members, they reached out to about 500 residents to raise awareness about the issue. Their efforts made a difference. Residents were especially receptive to the students, and the number of feedback cases on pigeon feeding in the estate decreased by 80% after the outreach. 

Another example is Mr Rahul Gupta from the Mountbatten Active Mobility Patrol Team. Mr Gupta is part of a team of volunteers who worked with LTA to reach out to cyclists and PMD users in the area to promote safe and considerate riding. Later on, Mr Gupta will share with us the team’s experiences. These experiences show us the positive impact that can be created when public agencies not only work for the community, but also together with the community.

Community partnerships are also important in that many ideas, resources and solutions reside in the community. MSO actively encourages co-creation of solutions by facilitating ground-up efforts by individuals and groups to ideate and implement solutions. We recently held the OneService Innovation Challenge to get the public to give us ideas and to co-create new OneService features with us. We also partnered the South West CDC to organise the inaugural “Love Your Living Environment Youth Challenge” for youths to brainstorm, prototype and implement ideas to better manage municipal issues in their community. These events have generated many good ideas which we will study further. We thank the participants who contributed with great enthusiasm, and the agencies and Town Councils for supporting these events.

Indeed, we can all contribute towards improving our living environment. As Individuals, we can be considerate and thoughtful towards our neighbours. Collectively, we can do even more. As Enya Lye, a student from Ai Tong School, aptly puts it in the opening video – alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much. I hope that more residents will join our awardees in getting involved and contributing ideas to make things better.

We should build our capabilities for the future to do even better tomorrow

Even as we celebrate the OneService spirit of service and collaboration today, we are constantly thinking about how we can do our work better tomorrow. The future can be fraught with challenges – rising public expectations, increasing costs as manpower growth slows, and ageing infrastructure. Fortunately, the future that has challenges, is also one that has opportunities. Technological advancements can enable us to deliver smarter and more efficient services. The winning team from the OneService Innovation Challenge, Team TBG, showed us how this can be done. They proposed allowing feedback providers to include panoramic videos when submitting cases. These videos can then be processed using artificial intelligence, enabling agencies to improve their accuracy and speed in identifying the location and the nature of the issue. This is an example of how public agencies can harness technology ideas and solutions that are available in the private sector and in the public at large to co-create better solutions.

To take on the challenges of the future, we need public agencies and officers to adopt a “can-do” attitude and an enterprising spirit, just as our award recipients have demonstrated. MSO will actively facilitate the adoption of new technology by supporting you through funding, piloting new operational capabilities, linking with potential partners, and leveraging the OneService channels to deliver new and improved services.

We can all make a difference

The award recipients show that we can improve our living environment in many ways, in more ways than one. Some went beyond our organisational boundaries to work with other agencies. Others stepped forward to reach out and mobilise the local communities. Whichever way it may be, we appreciate the time and effort that you have put in. You have put in extraordinary effort in what others deem to be ordinary work and achieve extraordinary outcomes as a result. You are an inspiration to others who are encouraged to follow your footsteps in working collaboratively, with the community, and building our capabilities to do even better in the future.

Thank you very much and congratulations again.